Object
Solar Tongue Flare
A large, blistering arc of solar plasma — a 'tongue of fire' — lancing from the host star. It has a white‑hot core with serrated, amber‑white to ember‑orange and blue trailing filaments and a shimmering radiation halo. As it grazes the target world's magnetosphere and upper atmosphere, sensors register intense heat flux, EMP‑like electromagnetic interference, spikes in instrumentation and transporter windows, and pressure from radiative force that tosses debris. Detected by the USS Enterprise, the flare becomes an immediate environmental threat that compresses command timelines and forces evacuation and other emergency responses for sheltered colonists.
1 appearances
Significance
Functions as the immediate physical threat that converts a distant astronomical spectacle into moral and tactical crisis: the near‑miss with the colony turns routine observation into an urgent evacuation, compresses Picard's command decisions into narrow transporter windows, and raises the stakes of every operational choice by threatening catastrophic civilian loss.
Appearances in the Narrative
When this object appears and how it's used